Those who voted for the Face-Eating Leopards Party are shocked at getting their faces eaten

[Scooter]

Trump's pro-Israel cabinet picks upset Muslims who voted for him

WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration's support for Israel's war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters.

"Trump won because of us and we're not happy with his secretary of state pick and others," said Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump.

Muslim support for Trump helped him win Michigan and may have factored into other swing state wins, strategists believe.
Trump picked Republican senator Marco Rubio, a staunch supporter of Israel for Secretary of State.

Earlier this year, Rubio said he would not call, opens new tab for a ceasefire in Gaza, and that he believed Israel should destroy "every element" of Hamas. "These people are vicious animals," he added.

Trump also nominated Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and staunch pro-Israel conservative who backs Israeli occupation of the West Bank and has called a two state solution in Palestine "unworkable", as the next ambassador to Israel.

He has picked Republican Representative Elise Stefanik, who called the UN a "cesspool of antisemitism", opens new tab for its condemnation of deaths in Gaza, to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network (AMEEN), said Muslim voters had hoped Trump would choose cabinet officials who work toward peace, and there was no sign of that.

"We are very disappointed," he said.

"It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement."

Nazarko said the community would continue pressing to make its voices heard about ending the war in Gaza. "At least we're on the map." (uh, no, you're not, and never will be under this administration)

Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and co-founder of the Abandon Harris campaign, which endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein, said Trump's staffing plans were not surprising, but had proven even more extreme that he had feared.

"It's like he's going on Zionist overdrive," he said. "We were always extremely skeptical ... Obviously we're still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played."

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Several Muslim and Arab supporters of Trump said they hoped Richard Grenell, Trump's former acting director of national intelligence, would play a key role after he led months of outreach to Muslim and Arab American communities, and was even introduced as a potential next secretary of state at events.

Another key Trump ally, Massad Boulos, the Lebanese father-in-law of Trump's daughter Tiffany, met repeatedly with Arab American and Muslim leaders.

Both promised Arab American and Muslim voters that Trump was a candidate for peace who would act swiftly to end the wars in the Middle East and beyond. Neither was immediately reachable.

Trump made several visits to cities with large Arab American and Muslim populations, include a stop in Dearborn, a majority Arab city, where he said he loved Muslims, and Pittsburgh, where he called Muslims for Trump "a beautiful movement. They want peace. They want stability."

Bill Bazzi, mayor of neighboring Dearborn Heights, who endorsed Trump, said he met the president-elect three times and still believed he would work to end the war, despite the cabinet appointments.

Rola Makki, the Lebanese American, Muslim vice chair for outreach of the Michigan Republican Party, agreed.

"I don't think everyone's going to be happy with every appointment Trump makes, but the outcome is what matters," she said.

"I do know that Trump wants peace, and what people need to realize is that there's 50,000 dead Palestinians and 3,000 dead Lebanese, and that's happened during the current administration."

Are these people all seriously brain damaged? In what version of the multiverse did they imagine that a Trump presidency would be more amenable to the Palestinian cause than Biden's, or Harris's? Did they not listen to a single word of what he has had to say about Israel, Palestine and this war?

How was Harris supposed to convince people this delusional to vote for her?

[Burning Petard]

You are not the first to wonder about this. My feeble attempt at a Master's in Political Science was dealing with the question why do people vote against their own best interest. That question was the motivation for Thomas Frank's book' What's the Matter With Kansas' published twenty years ago. IMNSHO, it is the fundamental flaw of democracy. There is a successful clothing vendor of Philadelphia who based his marketing on the statement 'we believe the informed consumer is our best customer.' Note there is no reference to accurate or objective information. In organizational management, it has long been recognized that control of the flow of information is essential to power within the organization. That is why the head of the United Nations Organization is called the secretary,

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

It's supposed to be 'enlightened self interest' which to me means that sometimes you recognize that you have to look a little beyond the immediate horizon. For me, as a heterosexual white male, there are all sorts of reasons why Trump, who will measure his success in economic terms and the strength of the stock market, might be the man for me. I'm hardly likely to need an abortion provider even if I get lucky, so why should I care about healthcare rights?

I keep seeing inflation as being the biggest single reason for Trump's apparent majority vote. Of course it's not inflation per se - which is gentle by the standards we saw in the 1970s - but, as SG alluded, it's Republicans who controlled the narrative on that issue and we find that, just as many Rs still think that the 2020 election was stolen, so too do many Rs think that inflation was 3x over the Biden years. And they will tell you that they saw it with their own eyes, never mind USDA ('obviously biased') and Heritage Foundation ('who they?') figures which conform to around 30% to 35% for most grocery items.

[Big RR]

The sad thing is that the information is out there for people who want to seek it out, and is more accessible than ever; you just have to stear around the spin. MY own feeling is that the great amount of information now available creates a fatigue in many; they want to rely on someone else summarizing it and telling them what it means. I recall reading a story called Irtnog, written by EB White in the 1930s, that addressed this in part. Basically, the premise was that people understood they could not read everything that was available to them, so they sought out people to condense and explain everything--eventually settling on it all being reduced to a single word every so often (I don't recall how often)--the current word was "irtnog" and those reading the nonsensical word equated it with reading and understanding all that was written. Sadly, we are progressing toward that--news reporting has become more and more of the propaganda, and many are just happy to accept what they agree with and ignore the rest, learning and understanding less and less, but certain that they know and understand everything.

[Burning Petard]

Delaware elected a trans woman to serve as the state representative in the US Congress. I did not know about that when I voted for her. If I had known I would have voted for her a bit faster.

Speaker Johnson says transgender women won't be allowed to use women’s restrooms in Capitol"

How do they enforce it? Anyone entering the women's restrooms must show some documentation? And what about trans men? Must they use the Women's' facilities? Now members of the congress are all issued little pins to get them into restricted areas. Will those now all have some kind of 'biological sex" indicator?

And by the way, just what does 'biological sex' mean? Does a birth-certificate that indicates 'male' become invalid if the person gets the snip operation and they are no longer able to reproduce--are they still 'biologically male'?

A lawyer told me my legal name was whatever I wanted it to be, as long as I was not committing a fraud. Is such common sense about the most common identifier just too subtle for the brilliant ethics of the GOP?

snailgate.

[Scooter]

If Republicans get this bill passed to limit washroom access according to sex assigned at birth, then Democratic congresswomen should show their solidarity with Congresswoman-elect McBride by swarming into the men's room in groups of five or so every time a Republican congressman enters. Then they just stand there, stare, point and laugh.

[Scooter]

Outside of some urban pockets, western North Carolina voted overwhelmingly for Trump. And now, they, too, are getting their faces eaten.

FEMA denies North Carolina's appeal for hurricane debris cost reimbursement

RALEIGH, N.C. —
On Friday afternoon, FEMA denied North Carolina's appeal to extend 100-percent cost reimbursement for debris removal cost-sharing related to Hurricane Helene recovery.

Read the full letter of denial, here.

North Carolina Governor Josh Stein released the following statement in reaction to FEMA's decision:

"The first step to help western North Carolina recover is to clean up all the debris. So far, we have removed more than 12 million cubic yards of debris from roads and waterways, but given the immense scale of the wreckage, we have only scratched the surface. FEMA’s denial of our appeal will cost North Carolina taxpayers potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up out west. The money we have to pay toward debris removal will mean less money towards supporting our small businesses, rebuilding downtown infrastructure, repairing our water and sewer systems, and other critical needs.

Despite this news, we are going to stay the course. We will keep pushing the federal and state governments to do right by western North Carolina. We will keep working with urgency, focus, and transparency to get any appropriated money on the ground as quickly as we can to speed the recovery. We will not forget the people of western North Carolina."

North Carolina has also requested $19 billion in disaster relief from the Trump administration and Congress.

For more information about that proposal, click here.

[Sue U]

NC elected a Democrat governor by 15 points over Trump-endorsed horror show Mark Robinson, the self-described "black Nazi" with a porn problem. (Google "The Lieutenant Governor Owes Me Money" for an amusing song by the Trailer Park Orchestra.) Trump (and his administration) doesn't give a shit about the people of NC (duh), he's just punishing the governor. The fact that Josh Stein is also Jewish is a bonus for the literal Nazis in Trumpworld.

[BoSoxGal]

And the story behind it: https://www.theassemblync.com/politics/ ... legations/

[Scooter]